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Character Analysis: In The Vignette Four Skinny Trees

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Imagine growing up in a neighborhood that tries day after day to tear you down. Imagine growing up in a world without role models to help guide you down the right path. Imagine growing up in a place where you saw your friends fall into a cycle of abuse. Imagine being the only one strong enough not to fall into the ways of the world around you. Wouldn’t that make you tougher in the long run? In The House On Mango Street, growing up in her neighborhood made Esperanza stronger. In the vignette Four Skinny Trees Esperanza finds strength in the trees. She lives in an area with no human role models, so she has to see beauty and find examples in other places. “When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees” (75) This quote shows that she is able to draw inspiration from the trees. Being able to find hope in places where there is little, is a skill she would probably not have had if she were to grow up in a rich suburban town, or anywhere with people she can look up. In summary, it is part of Esperanza’s personality to seek and find strength even in unusual objects like trees. …show more content…

In the vignette, she says “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.” (110) This quote shows that Esperanza sees more for her future than she could ever see through the lens of life on Mango Street. She knows that life where she is is not good enough for her, and knows that she will get what she wants. If she had grown up in a supportive neighborhood, she would not have had this skill. In short, Esperanza realized she has gathered enough strength, and that she has outgrown her

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Mitchell Curtis English 9 / Period 6 Mr.Boyat 17 October 2016 Three Influential Characters in The House on Mango Street In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the story is developed through the eyes of a young girl Esperanza. She learns about the realities of life in a house that she recently moved into. There are many characters that are written as she learns about her new neighborhood. The three most influential characters in the novel are Sally, her Mother ,and Marin.

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Yet her refusal to do so prevents her growth. She instead chooses to sit by her window and miss something that she can no longer have. Esperanza throughout the novel does the same. She misses a home, even though at that moment her home is Mango Street. She is constantly repeating throughout the novel that Mango Street is temporary and not her home.

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Esperanza’s house on Mango Street is not the house she dreamed on when she lived on Loomis Street, not the kind of house her parent’s talked about, not the house she wanted. Her house on Mango Street is a small, red house with even smaller stairs leading to the door. The brick are falling out of place and to get inside, one must shove the door, swollen like Esperanza’s feet in later vignettes, open. Once inside, where you are never very far from someone else, there are small hallway stairs that lead to the only one shared bedroom and bathroom. This house is just, “For the time being,”[5] Esperanza claims, for this is nothing like the house she longs for.

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She dreams “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever” (707). Esperanza believes that she can change the way she is living and live a better life. She is trying to get a good education to become a more improved and intelligent person so one day she does not have to be poor.

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In the the book The House on Mango Street Esperanza is shown to become a dynamic character throughout the story. This is shown by how she is at the beginning when she changes and why. In the beginning Esperanza cares about popularity her appearance and boys. This is all shown in the chapter “Chanclas”. Her mom buys her everything for the party she is going

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Everyone is affected by life’s circumstances. The responses to those experiences can have a positive or negative outcome in one’s future. In Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, the protagonist, Esperanza, gives us her views on life, how she views herself, and she views her future. Not only does she give her perspective throughout the story, she tells us of the numerous experiences that she grows through. These experiences have an impact on her, creating new emotions and new adult like perspectives she has never faced before.

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Esperanza shifts from a follower into a confused individual, allowing her to begin her life as a woman outside of the oppressive nature of Mango Street. The suffocating stereotypes and sad, gloomy traits of the culture surrounding Esperanza contribute to the cultivation of her strong will and ardor. Mango Street opens her eyes to the abusive nature of her environment, and aids her in breaking the chain of corruption by defining and terminating the situation for herself. The neighborhood itself allows Esperanza to

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In the book, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is portrayed as a young innocent girl that drastically changes over the course of the book. Esperanza is new to mango street and encounters many challenges but also positive experiences that she is able to take away from mango street. In order for Esperanza to transform as a human it was inevitable for her to face the struggles on mango street. As Esperanza matures throughout the novel she experiences three major developments that shape her future through the awakening of maturity, responsibility and her awakening of her interest in poetry.

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Because Esperanza’s achievements aren’t at top of the priority list for her family, Esperanza does not have to do much which reflects her life in the future. Not only are low expectations about achieving great things, but are also about the way people dress. Esperanza’s neighborhood consists of kids whose “clothes are crooked and old” (Cisneros 14). Notably, Esperanza is not expected to dress up fancy whereas if she goes to another neighborhood, their clothing and physical appearance are given a lot of attention. From these examples, one can see that when Esperanza goes into other neighborhoods or grows older and

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As a child, Esperanza wants only escape from mango Street. Her dream of independents and "self-definition" also means leaving her family behind without any responsibilities to her family. Throughout the book, her has also faced some situation where is feels ashamed to be part of the Mango Street community and in some instances refuses to admit she has anything to do with mango street. At the beginning of the book near the earlier chapters, Esperanza feels very insecure about herself in general along with the house that she lives in. As mentioned before, she doesn’t want to discuss her name nor where she lives.

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She states that she has “an anemic wrist” and she “can’t blow up a balloon without getting dizzy.” Her mother also states in her note to Sister Superior that she wants Esperanza to eat in the

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In the House on Mango Street, Esperanza is seeking for an identity of her own. In her current neighborhood, she struggles with economic, cultural, and gender based barriers to personal growth, and she believes that changing her surroundings is her solution; however, she realizes that to discover her identity, her ultimate destination is a home in the heart. The house on Mango Street was one that was the opposite of what Esperanza had dreamt her entire life. The house is, “…small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you 'd think they were holding their breath... bricks...crumbling in places, and the front door...so swollen you have to push hard to get in". (Cisneros 5)

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“In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in (Cisneros 13).” This quote is a significant part of the story because it shows how Esperanza truly feels about herself and her family. She thinks that because she is poor and lives and a bad neighborhood people move away from her family. Esperanza doesn’t think very much of her or her family at all. She thinks that it is because of their race that people do not want to be near them.

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I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.” (Cisneros 110). At the end of the book, Esperanza has fully accepted who she is. She accepts that fact that she grew up on Mango Street, but that will not hold her back from moving away and growing as a person.

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In the series of vignettes The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros details the life of main character Esperanza, a young girl living in a barrio of Chicago. As Esperanza tells the reader about her experiences in her day to day life, the reader hears about her struggles and dreams, her hopes and expectations in life and how these affect her. Being a young girl, Esperanza holds naivety and hope for the world, not having experienced many mature situations or society yet, and since she is going through the time in her life when she begins experiencing these issues, we see her heartbreak and the world she knew shatter. For example, when Esperanza and her family move to Mango Street, as our story kicks off, her parents would often talk about the life that they would get when they win the lottery, like having “A real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked.

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